


The Fourth Time

by St_Salieri



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Community: hoodie_time, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Overdosing, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:51:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/St_Salieri/pseuds/St_Salieri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fourth time Dean woke up changed everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fourth Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is from a [challenge](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/420437.html) at [](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/profile)[**hoodie_time**](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/). I was given three tags to choose from, and I chose _overdose_.

 

The first time Dean opened his eyes, the light burned them shut again immediately. The air folded around him like a thick blanket, muffling his ears and numbing his fingers. In the darkness behind his eyelids, his heart pounded out a steady drumbeat. He fell asleep again listening to it.

 

*****

The second time Dean opened his eyes, the light had dimmed – bright enough that he had to blink back tears, but not sharp enough to cause actual pain. It was cold, so cold that he could feel his ribs ache with small internal shudders. He took a deep breath, tasted vomit and chemicals, and immediately choked on the thick tube in the back of his throat. _Trach tube_ , he thought vaguely, but the knowledge wasn't enough to shut down the panic that had his hands fluttering like trapped birds. Instinct had him grabbing for his own throat, but his arms refused to move. Frightened beyond belief, he blinked at the white ceiling above him and yanked at the straps he could feel wound around his wrists.

"Mr. Young? Sir, calm down. We're going to get a doctor to remove that tube for you. I just need for you to calm down for me and listen to my voice and...Mr. Young? Can you hear me?"

 

*****

The third time Dean opened his eyes, the fluorescents made his eyelids twitch. He could feel the familiar shape of the cannula wound across his upper lip and behind his ears, and his throat ached when he swallowed. An IV line snaked from his arm up to a transparent bag hanging from a stand, and he squinted at the name printed on the label. _Dean Young_.

"You're awake."

Sam was seated in a chair beside the bed. He was leaning forward, studying his fingernails as if they held the secrets of the universe, and his voice was flat and even. He was possibly more calm than Dean had ever heard him sound without a soul, and the thought made Dean shiver.

"Sam?"

It came out hoarse, and Dean coughed around the swelling in his throat.

"I should go get the doctor or something. They said they'd want to see you when you woke up."

The flat affect hadn't left Sam's voice. He grabbed the sides of the chair as if ready to catapult himself out, and Dean could see his fingers shaking from the tightness of his grip.

He still hadn't looked at Dean once.

"Hey. Sam." It came out more clearly this time, but not by much. Dean looked around for a cup of water but didn’t see anything. "What the hell happened, man? I remember...."

He paused. Come to think of it, he didn't really remember much at all. They'd finished talking to witnesses in the afternoon - young boy dead, possible haunted house - and crashed at their motel room after beer and fast food (and just the tiniest bit of vodka, in Dean's case). And then nothing, as far as Dean was concerned.

Except that it clearly wasn't nothing, not with the way Sam was still holding on to the chair in a way that made Dean fear for its stability.

After so many years in the business, it was second nature to run a quick self-diagnostic. Headache, check. Nausea, check. Fatigue and dry mouth, check. But his head didn't ache the same way it usually did when he'd been hit hard enough to generate a concussion, and he didn't feel the sharp, burning ache that indicated a new broken bone or stab wound somewhere.

It was a testament to the patheticness of his life that he could even determine that.

Dean scrubbed at his eyes and sighed, then regarded Sam impatiently when he didn't so much as look up.

"Okay, I give up," he said testily, wincing at the ache in his throat. "Are you going to tell me how I ended up here?"

Sam finally - _finally_ \- looked Dean full in the eyes, and Dean flinched at the fury he saw there. Sam's eyes were red in his pale face, his hair lank and greasy as if he'd been running his fingers through it all night. Without a word he took something from his jacket pocket and threw it at Dean. It hit him square in the chest, nowhere near hard enough to hurt, and fell onto his sheet-covered lap before rolling to the floor with a clatter.

The brown pill bottle was empty, the generic plastic unlabeled and featureless. It rolled to a stop somewhere out of Dean's line of sight, and he wondered absently how something so small and light could make such a godawful noise.

Which was weird, because as far as Dean could remember, there should have been about six pills in there.

"I don't care that you've got these," Sam said in a low voice that trembled with suppressed rage. "I know that the lives we lead mean finding illegal ways to keep the supply kit restocked. Hell, you barely take anything to begin with, even when you're bleeding all over the goddamn rug. I didn't think it would be a problem."

The headache had spread behind both of Dean's eyes and across the bridge of his nose, and he closed his eyes as his stomach gave a sympathetic lurch.

"Dude, I'm tired," he muttered. "And I don't know what you're talking about. Is this about the pills? Because I haven't taken those in months. I mean, besides the ones I had at dinner, but that's just because you wouldn't stop bugging me about getting my ankle wrapped. Which I didn't need, thank you very much."

Sam nodded and pursed his lips, pushing himself to his feet with a shove that drove the heavy chair back to crash against the wall. Dean winced at the noise, eying Sam carefully as he started to pace across the room at the foot of the hospital bed.

"And how many of these are you supposed to take at a time, Dean? One? Two?"

Sam scooped the empty bottle from the floor and hurled it in Dean's direction again. It crashed harmlessly to the floor before it could even reach him, too tiny to generate any kind of momentum.

"I don't know. Two or three?" Dean swallowed hard, the ache in his throat building as he watched Sam pace the room, back and forth and back and forth, three long steps each time before turning. He had an awful feeling about whatever was about to come out of Sam's mouth next, and he fought the impulse to cover his ears like a toddler.

Sam finally slowed the frantic pacing and settled to a stop at the end of Dean's bed. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, looking somewhere over Dean's left ear. The sad, twisted smirk on his face made Dean's chest ache.

"Maybe," Sam said finally. "I mean, three at a time is no big deal. We've both taken that much before. Maybe even four, on a good day. A day when your liver isn't on life support, that is." His jaw tightened, and he seemed to be struggling with himself. After some internal battle that Dean wasn't privy to, Sam finally looked him in the eyes.

"How much did you have to drink last night, Dean?"

Dean swallowed hard and crossed his arms across his own chest defensively. The raw skin of his wrists where he had been restrained rubbed against the material of his gown.

"I had a beer at dinner with you," he said. "You were there. And I took a few of the pills. That's it. Damn it, Sam, whatever you think...."

"You had _three_ beers," Sam interrupted fiercely. "And that's on top of the...I don't know, five? six? shots of vodka you had too. I mean, I couldn't exactly tell how much, given that you drank it straight from the bottle."

Dean shook his head and grabbed on to the sides of his own gown to keep from shaking. "Oh, please. What are you, my sponsor? Okay, _maybe_ it was a couple of beers, and a swallow or two of the vodka, but there's no way...."

"You don't even know, do you?" Sam was shaking his head incredulously. "I mean, I know you drink a lot. So does every goddamn hunter I've ever met. It seems to come with the job. I figured, you don't need me to be your mother. Besides, after the year you just had, when I was...."

Sam's voice broke and his face crumpled momentarily. The anger and defensiveness Dean had been feeling disappeared in a wave of concern.

"Sammy," he started softly, but apparently Sam's method of explanation involved not letting Dean get a word in edgewise.

"I went to bed after you did. Or maybe you passed out, I don't know." Sam was staring at the air above Dean's ear again, his voice fixed and cold. "I've been trying to figure out what happened - and I had plenty of time to do it while you were in here on the verge of _dying_ again, by the way - and as near as I can figure, you woke up and forgot you'd taken the pills and took some more. Six pills on their own? Eh, probably all right. Six pills plus a gutload of cheap alcohol? Not exactly good."

Dean closed his eyes and bent forward at the waist, unable to watch the way Sam's eyes shone and his mouth wobbled.

"I woke up to take a piss. Your face was grey, you were sweating like you'd run a marathon, and you were barely breathing. They told me if it had been a few more hours they might not have been able to...."

"Jesus," Dean breathed. Burned on the front of his mind was the image of Sam sprawled out on the ground, massive body unresponsive and eyes shining with hellfire when Dean peeled back his eyelids. The remembered panic - _please Sam wake up please please be okay I'll do anything don't you dare leave me like this you asshole please please please_ \- rose up and tried to choke him.

The memory was bad enough. The thought that Sam had gone through something similar was almost unbearable.

"Jesus _fuck_ ," Dean whispered for emphasis, covering his mouth with his hand to hold back the bile. "God, Sammy, I'm so sorry."

"Of course, I could be wrong." Sam's voice shook with the deadly control he tried to hold, and Dean couldn't bring himself to look at him. "I'm assuming it was all an accident. A stupid, senseless accident caused by a fucking moron who's been trying to kill himself slowly for years now. I mean, maybe you didn't want to take the slow route anymore. Maybe you decided this would be a good time to check out for good."

Dean's head shot up with enough speed to leave him momentarily dizzy.

"No," he said fiercely, the word torn out of him, an absolute truth. "I would never do that to you." If there was nothing else he knew in this world, he knew that.

If he expected Sam to relax, he was disappointed. The twisted smile was back, the one that made Dean shudder and think of Lucifer.

"But that's the only thing holding you back, isn't it?"

It wasn't really a question, and they both knew it. Dean opened his mouth to issue denial, reassurance, anything that would remove that hard look from Sam's face. But he couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"Sam," he said helplessly, trying to put everything he felt into that one word that meant everything to him. But it was too late, and Sam stepped back with a shake of his head.

"I can't do this," he muttered, and without another word he was through the door and gone.

 

*****

The fourth time Dean opened his eyes, the room was shrouded in near darkness broken only by the soft light of various monitors. He'd spent enough time in hospitals to recognize that the warm fuzziness in his head meant a sedative, and he vaguely recalled yelling at a Dr. Summers who had stopped by to talk to him after Sam disappeared. _It's standard procedure to have a visit with one of our on-call psychiatrists whenever self-harm is suspected, Mr. Young. Now, why don't you tell me what you remember about the other night?_

Dean reached up to rub at his eyes. The adrenaline jolt of panic he felt when his right arm wouldn't move was enough to dispel whatever tiredness remained, and he reached down with his left had to yank at the restraint holding him to the bed.

Except that it wasn't a restraint.

Sam was sound asleep in the chair beside him as if he'd never left, his head pillowed on the bed next to Dean's knees. He clutched Dean's right hand in his own with the strength that didn't seem possible from someone so deeply asleep.

Dean froze, left hand hovering. His first instinct was to pull away. It was the thought of Sam waking to find Dean withdrawing that stopped him cold. Instead, he squeezed Sam's hand gently and felt Sam's grip tighten even further. Dean rested his left hand on top of Sam's head for a moment, brushing Sam's hair back from his face.

"I'm sorry," Dean whispered to the darkness. It wasn't the whole of what he meant, not really, but he couldn't bring himself to speak any promises aloud. For now, this would have to do.

 

 


End file.
